Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
But other things are required of a writer of Short-stories which are not
required of a writer of Novels. The novelist may take his time: he has
abundant room to turn about. The writer of Short-stories must be
concise, and compression, a vigorous compression, is essential. For
him, more than for any one else, the half is more than the whole. Again,
the novelist may be commonplace, he may bend his best energies to the
photographic reproduction of the actual; if he show us a cross-section
of real life we are content; but the writer of Short-stories must have
originality and ingenuity. If to compression, originality, and ingenuity
he add also a touch of fantasy, so much the better. It may be said that
no one has ever succeeded as a writer of Short-stories who had not
ingenuity, originality, and compression, and that most of those who have
succeeded in this line had also the touch of fantasy. But there are not
a few successful novelists lacking not only in fantasy and compression,
but also in ingenuity and originality; they had other qualities, no
doubt, but these they had not. If an example must be given, the name of
Anthony Trollope will occur to all. Fantasy was a thing he abhorred,
compression he knew not, and originality and ingenuity can be conceded
to him only by a strong stretch of the ordinary meaning of the words.
Other qualities he had in plenty, but not these. And, not having them,
he was not a writer of Short-stories. Judging from his essay on
Hawthorne, one may even go so far as to say that Trollope did not know a
good Short-story when he saw it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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